This isn’t a “Cuomo 2020?” post. He won’t be the Democratic nominee unless something happens to Biden, and even if it did, Bernie Nation would demand that Sanders be the nominee instead. Cuomo won’t be the VP nominee either. Biden’s already promised he’ll pick a woman. What would be the case for Cuomo over, say, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who’s also seen her polling rise amid the COVID-19 crisis?
This is a simple “damn, look at those numbers” post. The Trump era has conditioned us to believe that politicians’ polling doesn’t move very much in response to current events. Partisanship is too bitter. What Democrats love, Republicans despise, and vice versa. The laws of political gravity that governed America for decades are suspended in this hyperpartisan age.
But it’s not true. Trump’s polling doesn’t move very much. But other pols who don’t inspire the same intense love-or-hate reaction among voters do see public support for them shift as events change. A lot, as this mind-bending new Siena data makes clear:
That nearly-vertical increase on the right reminds me of the spike in unemployment cases last week. It’s thoroughly bipartisan: 95 percent of Dems, 87 percent of independents, and even 70 percent of Republicans in New York approve of the job Cuomo’s doing in handling the pandemic. His overall job approval has completely reversed itself in the span of a month, from 36-63(!) last month to 63-35(!!) now. That feels counterintuitive: Since his state is now the epicenter of the outbreak, you might think residents would be angry and blame him and other government leaders for not doing more to prevent the calamity that’s befallen them. But that’s now how major crises work for politicians and their public support, as we learned with George W. Bush after 9/11. Striking the right tone and being proactive to mitigate the damage is what voters want. That’s what Cuomo’s done, so he’s reaped the benefits.
But that’s not all that’s going on here. There’s a broad “rally around our leaders no matter what” effect among America’s frightened population. Check this out:
Not a ton of data out there for individual states, but here’s change in net job approval ratings for a few govs + Trump.
Whitmer (MI): +30
Cooper (NC): +31
Cuomo (NY): +55
**
Trump (US): +5(MRG polls for Whitmer, PPP for Cooper, Siena for Cuomo; for MI/NC initial poll in 2019)
— Will Jordan (@williamjordann) March 30, 2020
It could be that all three governors are doing sterling jobs of crisis management but I think the “rally” effect explains a lot of it. And if you doubt me, chew on this: This same Siena poll finds that Bill de Blasio’s approval rating in handling the outbreak among residents of New York City is … 61/31, including a 70/21 rating among NYC Democrats. For this doofus right here.
It’s reeeeeeeally easy for a political leader to be showered with public goodwill in a crisis. Not just in the New York either:
How does the Trump Bump compare with public opinion for other world leaders? See this chart from AFL-CIO political director Mike Podhorzer, @Mike_AFL. pic.twitter.com/PCvVTqprzb
— Noam Scheiber (@noamscheiber) March 28, 2020
Looking at all of these numbers puts into perspective just how modest Trump’s polling bump has been. He has seen a bounce in job approval: His current rating of 47.3 percent is the highest of his presidency and the gap between his approval and disapproval ratings is the smallest it’s been (two points) since the first two weeks of his term. But he’s seen nothing like the gains made by Cuomo, Whitmer, or even de Blasio, which supports the “glass half empty” view of his current minor polling surge. Maybe that’s because Democrats have never forgiven him for his 2016 upset. Maybe it’s because Trump’s never meaningfully reached out to them. Maybe it’s because, in modern American politics, presidents are lightning rods for partisanship and thus can never do much better (or worse) than 50/50. Maybe it’s because, unlike Cuomo, Trump keeps veering back towards petty partisan squabbling in his public remarks instead of rising above it.
Whether you blame him, or the left, or the general tenor of tribalism circa 2020, I think the smarter read on his mini-bounce lately is how meager it is, not that it’s happening. A 47/49 job approval is good by his standards, possibly enough to win a tight race with Biden if it holds in November, but it still leaves him with no margin for error. If his approval were even five points higher, he’d be a heavy favorite. As it is, at 47/49 he still trails Biden — who’s been nowhere for a month — in every recent national poll even though the margins between them have shrunk.
This is the tone he should set the next time he’s tempted to tweet angrily about Pelosi or “the woman from Michigan,” Whitmer. It’s not hard to do.
Gov. Cuomo: No Politics, No Partisanship, No Division. UNITY. pic.twitter.com/v2zUdN1NO1
— Colby Hall (@colbyhall) March 30, 2020
